As Wolverine opens in cinemas, Tim Martin looks at the best - and worst - of
our homegrown superheroes.

Had you forgotten that the superhero Wolverine is a Canadian? I had, I confess. Not just because the grumpy old man of the X-Men exists at such distance from maple-leaf stereotype — although he does, being much more likely to blow cigar smoke in your eye or skewer you with adamantine claws than apologise or take you to a hockey game — but because one tends to assume that most superheroes are American by default. US culture has proved fertile ground for such myths since Superman’s creation in 1938, but attempts to funnel the spirit of other countries into skintight costumes and capes have been less successful. One can’t imagine the French or the Italians getting particularly exercised about the failure, but the Brits are a different matter.

No one needs reminding that the caped crusaders on today’s cinema screens owe much to British talent. Batman is played by a Welshman, Superman by a Jerseyman, and directors like Christopher Nolan and Ken Branagh lurk behind the cameras. Further back in the 1980s, it was the influx of writers such as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Mike Carey and Grant Morrison that helped to drag American comics from the creative slough of identikit theatrics and point them towards a future of adult plotlines, snappy dialogue and ironical introspection. So where, then, are all the British superheroes?

Standard procedure here would be to mention Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and other (non-super) heroes as refracted homegrown equivalents to Marvel and DC’s men in tights. But that’s just special pleading. A riffle through the archives does indeed reveal several British supes who deserve a share of the attention garnered by their louder, older, more famous counterparts across the Atlantic — as well as some perfect examples of why no one’s ever heard of the breed.

Zenith

The adventures of a lackadaisical British popster, son of two Baby Boomer superheroes, who is forced to abandon his assignations with willing groupies when neo-Nazis find a hibernating Übermensch, fill him with Lovecraftian horrors and sic him on London. Long out of print, Zenith is reissued by 2000AD later this year, and it’s brilliant: recognizably British in its sense of the absurd but with a fearsomely exciting high-stakes plot. If anyone ever wants to make a good UK superhero movie, there are many worse places to start.

Britain’s first superpowered blueblood. Created in the Fifties with his sidekick Squire as a homegrown competitor to Batman, Knight was initially the alter ego of Percy Sheldrake, Earl of 'Wordenshire', and could be summoned by ringing the bell of his local church. By the time Grant Morrison briefly revived the character at the end of the Nineties, the new Knight was seen to have piddled away his inheritance and acquired a drug habit, and had to be rescued from the gutter to restart his crimefighting career from someone’s garage. Now there’s Broken Britain for you.

Another super-aristo who failed to move with the times. Raised in a posh family fallen on hard times — Wikipedia amusingly describes him as “too proud to fraternise with lower classes” — Brian Braddock has the good fortune to be around when Merlin turns up brandishing a superpowered Amulet of Right. Subsequent exploits made for a wearisome parade of victories over Arthurian villains, Nazis and other gestures towards Britain’s storied past, while successive attempts to rename him as ‘Excalibur’ and ‘Brittanic’ took the franchise even farther towards swivel-eye territory.

Miracleman

The best homegrown superhero writing draws more on British satirical tradition than it does on Blitz-spirit cliché and poshos with funny names. Years before Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Northampton magus Alan Moore began sniping at superhero tropes with Miracleman, imagining a knackered freelance journalist able to swap bodies with a glittering blond super-being at the whisper of a magic word. Under Neil Gaiman’s subsequent stewardship, the series became a queasy meditation on the moral demands of supreme power in a super-utopia. Last year’s resolution of a long-running rights dispute holds out hope for a reprint, too.

Union Jack

Originally Lord Falsworth, military man and scourge of His Majesty’s enemies during the Second World War. Loses his legs in combat with the evil Baron Blood, so his son takes up the mantle, subsequently becoming one of the very few gay superheroes. He bites the dust in turn, however, and it falls to a working-class Mancunian to take up the cudgels in Jack’s most recent incarnation. It’s an interesting trajectory for a British character, if you overlook the temporary possession by Sir Lancelot’s ghost, but perhaps of more use as a sociological document than a Hollywood adaptation.

A take on the superhero myth from a Northern Irish writer, garlanded with the kind of swearing, sex and gore that would make Tarantino blench. The Boys chronicles the efforts of a band of trenchcoated enforcers, led by a musclebound ex-SAS titan and a wimpy Scot called Hughie, to control with extreme prejudice the Spandex super-puppets of an American military-industrial complex. Both funnier and more offensive than Mark Millar's later Kick-Ass, this has a bilious charm all its own.